


Failed interview

by showsforsnails



Category: Real Person Fiction
Genre: 1980s, Gen, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-16 01:02:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13625250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/showsforsnails/pseuds/showsforsnails
Summary: I mentioned Dada — after all, everyone talking about punk was talking about Dada. “Maybe,” he said, “but when I was shooting it I was thinking about Jacobean drama and Italian westerns.”  Surprised, I asked why. “I always think about them,” he said.





	Failed interview

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Неудавшееся интервью](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13479852) by [showsforsnails](https://archiveofourown.org/users/showsforsnails/pseuds/showsforsnails). 



I don’t remember what I had expected or who I’d thought I would meet - a disappointed romantic who, nevertheless, hadn’t given up on his ideals, a pitiless denouncer with no leniency for anyone near or far, an idle man involved in other people’s games that he knew nothing about, — but I do remember that the reality proved to be stranger than any guess. I was looking at a fairly young man (at the time we met he was about thirty), so thin that he seemed to have learned to live off air and to draw from air his overflowing energy, with disheveled red hair and big, claw-like hands he gesticulated with when he talked. His entire being was channeling not certainty but excitement, joy, optimism against all reason. Romantic clichés about unlovely people completely transformed when talking about a beloved subject did not apply to him — however much we talked, however happily he joked, however passionate he sounded about the Surrealists and Derek Jarman (at the time, the name meant nothing to me), I was still sitting opposite the same awkward, stick-thin man with horse teeth and bulging eyes.  
I mentioned Dada — after all, everyone talking about punk was talking about Dada. “Maybe,” he said, “but when I was shooting it I was thinking about Jacobean drama and Italian westerns.” Surprised, I asked why. “I always think about them,” he said. I uttered the word “revolution”. “Exactly, that's what they were trying to achieve, that's what we all wanted — change the world, overthrow the monarchy, restart the clock. But, as you see,” we were sitting in a sparsely furnished hotel room and Cox pointed at the window outside which the grey and dirty London was oozing smoke and dampness, - “punk lost. Everything stayed the same, the Queen’s had her Jubilee, Thatcher rules the country. So nothing matters anymore.” On the page the words might seem gloomy and hopeless but the man who said them looked neither full of gloom nor deprived of hope.  
I made another attempt to return the conversation to the film that Cox had made and was refusing to talk about, even though this was the sole reason of our meeting. I pointed out that “Sid and Nancy” was being accused of vilification, embellishment and plainly twisting the facts. “Every scene,” Cox shrugged, “is based on interviews with people who were involved in those events. We invented nothing.” Twenty minutes later, when I had once again managed to return to our main topic, he said: “Of course it's not a documentary or a biography — who needs biographies now? Their time is over. I didn't make a movie about the Sex Pistols, I made it about the London punk scene, or rather not even that but drug addiction.” In a way, I suggested, the film could be considered not only a story about drug addiction but also a love story. Cox sighed. “Yes, in a way,” he said. “But love stories are not my specialty or my element.” I insisted: the film's original title was “Love Kills”. Cox shrugged and started talking about Jarman’s “Jubilee”.


End file.
